Saturday, February 03, 2007

Welcome To Paradise!

MEXICO - A B.C. construction worker jailed for more than two years in Mexico over a building contract that went sour says he’s been wrongly imprisoned by a corrupt system.

“Get me out of here,” a frustrated Peter Kimber said yesterday from his prison cell in Huatulco, where he suffers from kidney problems and other ill health.

He said he has endured dozens of beatings and atrocious conditions because he can’t pay bribes to get out.

“I want somebody to actually help save what’s left of my life,” he said. “I’ve tried it on my own for two years and four months. There’s absolutely no way for a human being to fight against these people legally.”

Kimber, 44, lived in Mission before moving to Mexico in 2001 with his then common-law wife, her four daughters and his three children from a previous marriage.

He said he was arrested on Oct. 15, 2004, after a couple from the U.K. reneged on a contract to have Kimber build them a home.

He said Kevin and Tess Hunneybell, who run the Oaxaca Hotel bed-and-breakfast in Huatulco, had him arrested for fraud.

The Hunneybells couldn’t be reached for comment.

Kimber related the horrors of living in inhumane conditions, where “dog-eat-dog” fights over food are common because prisoners are given $25 a month to buy food, drinking water, clothing and toiletries.

“I never envisioned eating out of garbage cans that people have been spitting in all day or beating the living hell out of someone because I want his food,” he said.

Kimber estimated he’s been in 150 fights and was stabbed by a blood-filled syringe during a jail robbery.

He said money he’s paid for bribes to get out of the prison has been wasted and he’s been asked to sign blank documents and confessions to crimes he didn’t commit.